Even in a quiet moment, away from the blue and white noise, Lou Lamoriello won’t allow himself to dream. It isn’t who he is.

He says he won’t think about the possibility of drafting Auston Matthews first overall, the probability of Steven Stamkos’ availability in free agency, the opportunity left behind by the Maple Leafs new-found salary cap flexibility.

“I’m not even thinking about where we pick in the draft,” said Lamoriello in a lengthy exclusive conversation on Wednesday. “You plan for every possibility. You prepare. You never know what might come about.

“The thing you can’t do is jump ahead of yourself. I work very hard at not thinking that way. You can’t get wrapped up in ‘what if?’ (Last June’s draft and how close the Leafs came to Connor McDavid) is a great example of why you don’t get yourself wrapped up in that. You can’t have an idealist attitude, you need a realistic approach. I worry about today and tomorrow. That’s how I think. I’m not worried about next week, yet. We have an awful lot of work to do here.

“If you think this is easy, I can tell you, it’s not.”

Lamoriello has never done this before — tear a team apart and start basically from scratch. The teardown part of the equation has begun for the Maple Leafs. It isn’t complete. There are still more decisions to be made on veteran players. Typically, Lamoriello won’t get into the specifics of who may stay and who may go — and in some cases he doesn’t have the answers yet himself — but this remains ground zero for the rebranding Leafs.

And there is still a foundation to lay.

For public consumption, or even privately, Lamoriello won’t necessarily share which players he likes, who he believes in and who he thinks he can build around after so many have been traded away.

“We’re still finding out about everybody,” said Lamoriello, 73, who admits to being re-invigorated by his first-year job with the Leafs, frenetic as it has been. It has been so busy, so intense, that sometimes he doesn’t have time to bother taking note of his personal feelings. That would be counter-productive: In his world, that would be akin to taking his eye off the ball.

“We have decisions to make at the end of the year,” he said. “Which of the veterans do we want here? You have a plan, but then you look at every possible direction. Is there something else we can do? You can’t leave anything unturned.

“We’ve tried to put ourselves in a position to be able to do anything that comes about, with no restrictions. We’ve opened up salary cap space. We’ve acquired draft picks. Whatever we think is needed, we’re going do. We can be flexible. That’s what I like about where we are.”

But what about the players? How many does he have that he likes?

Lamoriello built the New Jersey Devils on goaltending and defence and coaching and the neutral zone trap. He traded up to draft Martin Brodeur in 1990. He used the Leafs pick to get Scott Niedermayer third overall in 1991. His first draft pick, Brendan Shanahan, left in free agency, bringing him Scott Stevens in compensation. In Lamoriello’s first nine seasons in New Jersey, he drafted nine players who would go on to play more than 1,000 NHL games.

By comparison, in the same time-period the Leafs have drafted one player, Tie Domi, who has played more than 1,000 games.

Lamoriello’s AHL team in Albany in 1995, a club he compares to this year’s Marlies team in regular-season prowess, went on to win the league championship, the last time an NHL team and its AHL affiliate won titles in the same season. Players on that Albany team went on to play an incredible 8,393 NHL games: “That’s why I believe in the farm team,” said Lamoriello. “I’ve seen what’s possible.”

The success in New Jersey started first with Sean Burke in goal, then mostly with Brodeur, the all-time great. Do the Leafs have a goalie for next season? Or the seasons after that?

“I don’t want to get into specific players,” he said. “I’ll leave it to everyone else on the outside to analyze us. Those kind of things I’m never going to speak about.”

The thinking around the NHL is that the Leafs don’t have their goalie of the future. They will have to look elsewhere to find him.

On defence, it’s almost as complicated. There is Morgan Rielly, kind of a poor-man’s Niedermayer, but of high NHL quality. And there is Jake Gardiner, who has made some strides under coach Mike Babcock. And after that, there isn’t much at the NHL level to build around. The Leafs value AHL player Rinat Valiev, junior defencemen Andrew Nielsen and Travis Dermott (both drafted last June) and there’s a long list of prospects, including Viktor Loov, who may one day play. But that group will certainly be enhanced by draft selections made this June.

The Leafs have a growing group of developing forwards from William Nylander to Mitch Marner to Connor Brown to Dmytro Timashov and Nikita Soshnikov. They have hope for all of them and that list will grow as well come June.

“You can’t think about what tomorrow brings right now,” said Lamoriello. “When you worry about the end result, you never get there. I try and think of all the things I have to follow and try and do it the best way I can. We have a fundamental plan that can change at any time. In my opinion, we’re going according to schedule. I like where we are.”

He says that he hates what the current standings say: That the Leafs are the worst team in the NHL. This is a new place for him, for Babcock, for chief scout Mark Hunter, for president Shanahan. “It’s not easy to go through this, but we have to go through this.”

Hockey voices will tell you the teardown is relatively basic. The build is the hard part. The three-time Stanley Cup-champion Blackhawks drafted Duncan Keith in 2002. They drafted Jonathan Toews in 2006 and Patrick Kane in 2007. They won their first Cup in 2010. It took eight years to get where they needed to be.

Lamoriello is on the first year of a three-year contract. He laughed when asked if he sees himself staying beyond those three years. What he said without saying it: No way is he leaving with the job half-done.

“It was an exciting time the other night,” Lamoriello said of Nylander’s first game and six others making their Maple Leafs debut. “Just seeing the kids, that gets you going. The way the team reacted. The way the fans reacted. That reception at the end of the game. I can’t put myself in the mind of the fans, but I thought it was a great night.”

He wouldn’t say how long any of the callups would stay in Toronto, a day, a week, only to be certain that Nylander, Soshnikov, Zach Hyman and Kasperi Kapanen will play the entire playoff season with the Marlies.

“We have not rushed any of them,” said Lamoriello. “They have been in minor leagues for 60 games. We’re not going to rush them. It could have been very easy to bring someone up here. But we’ve stuck with the thought process. The plan was always to bring some of them up after trade deadline. We did that. Now let’s see what happens.”

In Lamoriello, the Leafs have the most experienced general manager in the NHL, one who knows the rules well and manipulates them on occasion for the Leafs benefit, but there is a paradox here. There is little Lamoriello doesn’t know: His staff, from Hunter to the scouts Hunter hired, to Kyle Dubas to Brandon Pridham may be the least experienced in the NHL.

Lamoriello bristles at that assertion — one that comes from other NHL people who wonder about the future of the Leafs and the fact he didn’t hire most of those who work for him.

“I have total confidence in Mark Hunter,” said Lamoriello. “Being around him and with him, total confidence. He’s been doing this a long time, just not at the NHL level. I thought he had an excellent first draft. I don’t see inexperience being a factor here at all.

“We have a lot of work to do here. We may take a half-step backwards (next season) to take a full step forward. Sometimes that’s a necessary part of the process. We’re looking at every possibility. This isn’t easy to go through. None of us like losing. You just have to stick to the plan and keep going.”

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